The Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, also known as R3CR, will operate in the National Center for Natural Products Research. The center is supported by a grant partnership led by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

The R3CR will provide cannabis research information through an interactive website, webinars, seed funding and conferences. This will help researchers generate more science-backed evidence.

Over the next five years, the resource center will allow more researchers to enter the field of cannabis research, said Donald Stanford, assistant director of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences., the Ole Miss institute that oversees the natural products center.  And those scientists will likely realize a significant improvement in the quality of their work, he said.

“People will realize significant changes in the landscape of cannabis research,” he said. “Changes such as stronger and improved regulation compliance, development of more cannabis technologies, as well as the FDA receiving relevant safety data to make decisions on cannabinoids in foods and dietary supplements, can all eventually contribute to people’s health.

Through a collaborative agreement with the National Institutes of Health, NCNPR will lead the partnership with Washington State University and the United States Pharmacopoeia to provide guidance on regulations, quality standards and best practices.

The NIH partners include the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Aging and National Cancer Institute. All have a shared interest of developing standard methods for scientific investigations into possible therapeutic effects of compounds found in the Cannabis sativa plant.

“The missions of the participating NIH institutes reflect why I am so excited about the long-term outcomes that are possible,” Stanford said. “We all have family and friends who face diseases or conditions for which alternative treatments may be effective.”

The resource center will comprise three scientific core groups that have specialized responsibilities and activities: a regulatory guidance core, a research support core and a research standards core.

The regulatory guidance core will be led by Mahmoud ElSohly, research professor in the natural products center and longtime director of the UM Marijuana Project. The group will serve as a clearinghouse for rules and regulations from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that affect cannabis research.

“Because conducting cannabis studies involves a complexity of regulations of various federal and state agencies, both researchers and administrators must fully understand the requirements and must devise ways to comply in a practical manner,” ElSohly said. “Our resource center will strive to provide guidance on matters such as this.”

Robert Welch, director of the National Center for Cannabis Research and Education at UM, will join ElSohly in helping interpret regulations.

“Some researchers in the U.S. may be unclear on the regulatory requirements for carrying out cannabis studies with human subjects,” Welch said. “FDA and the administrators of various state-sanctioned medical cannabis programs want to see these types of studies move forward so that researchers can properly explore concerns about safety and efficacy.”

Mary Paine, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at WSU, will lead the research support core. This part of the resource center will disseminate scientific and regulatory information, organize workshops and conferences and administer seed funding grants to cannabis researchers nationwide.

Nandakumara Sarma, director of dietary supplements and herbal medicines at USP, will lead the research standards core that will provide best practices and technical information guidance.

The new resource center aims to work with a broad range of people and organizations engaged in studying cannabis. These include scientists, federal and state agencies, institutional administrators and suppliers of research materials.

“This is a unique opportunity to assist others and encourage further research in all fields of cannabis research,” said Ikhlas Khan, director of the National Center for Natural Products Research and leader of the new resource center.

“Establishment of this center should promote more science, and our hope is that in the near future, this center will develop evidence-based products that will address quality, safety and efficacy.”

This project was made possible by grant no. U24AT013161 from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NCCIH, NCI, NIA, NIDA and the National Institutes of Health.

Top: A technician works with cannabis seedlings at the National Center for Natural Product Research. The center will house the new Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. Photo by Don Stanford/Research Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences

For decades, researchers in the U.S. had to use only marijuana grown at a facility located in Oxford, Mississippi. A few other approved growers have been added in recent years.

Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

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Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

For decades, researchers in the U.S. had to use only marijuana grown at a facility located in Oxford, Mississippi. A few other approved growers have been added in recent years.

Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

As the Biden administration moves to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, scientists say the change will lift some of the restrictions on studying the drug.

But the change won’t lift all restrictions, they say, neither will it decrease potential risks of the drug or help users better understand what those risks are.

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, which is defined as a substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The Biden administration proposed this week to classify cannabis as a Schedule III controlled substance, a category that acknowledges it has some medical benefits.

The current Schedule I status imposes many regulations and restrictions on scientists’ ability to study weed, even as state laws have made it increasingly available to the public.

“Cannabis as a Schedule I substance is associated with a number of very, very restrictive regulations,” says neuroscientist Staci Gruber at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “You have very stringent requirements, for example, for storage and security and reporting all of these things.”

These requirements are set by the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Institutional Review Board and local authorities, she says. Scientists interested in studying the drug also have to register with the DEA and get a state and federal license to conduct research on the drug.

“It’s a burdensome process and it is certainly a process that has prevented a number of young and rather invested researchers from pursuing [this kind of work],” says Gruber.

Reclassifying the drug as Schedule III puts it in the same category as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. Substances in this category have accepted medical use in the United States, have less potential for abuse than in higher categories and abuse could lead to low to moderate levels of dependence on the drug.

This reclassification is “a very, very big paradigm shift,” says Gruber. “I think that has a big trickle down effect in terms of the perspectives and the attitudes with regard to the actual sort of differences between studying Schedule III versus Schedule I substances.”

Gruber welcomes the change, particularly for what it will mean for younger colleagues. “For researchers who are looking to get into the game, it will be easier. You don’t have to have a Schedule I license,” she says. “That’s a big deal.”

The rescheduling of cannabis will also “translate to more research on the benefits and risks of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions,” writes Dr. Andrew Monte in an email. He is associate director of Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety and an emergency physician and toxicologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“This will also help improve the quality of the research since more researchers will be able to contribute,” he adds.

Senate Democrats hold a press conference on Wednesday pitching new, less strict marijuana laws. From left are Senators Cory Booker of N.J., Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

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Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

Senate Democrats hold a press conference on Wednesday pitching new, less strict marijuana laws. From left are Senators Cory Booker of N.J., Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag

But the change in classification won’t significantly expand the number of sources for the drug for researchers, says Gruber. For 50 years, researchers were allowed to use cannabis from only one source – a facility at the University of Mississippi. Then, in 2021, the DEA started to add a few more companies to that list of approved sources for medical and scientific research.

While she expects more sources to be added in time, she and many of the researchers she knows have yet to benefit from the recently added sources, as most have limited products available.

“And what we haven’t seen is any ability for researchers –cannabis researchers, clinical researchers – to have the ability to study products that our patients and our recreational consumers or adult consumers are actually using,” she adds. “That remains impossible.”

There is very little known information about what is in cannabis products on the market today. Some studies show that the level of THC, the main intoxicant in marijuana, being sold to consumers today is significantly higher than what was available decades ago, and high THC levels are known to pose more health risks.

And Monte cautions that the reclassification itself doesn’t mean that cannabis has no health risks. Monte and his colleagues have been documenting some of those risks in Colorado by studying people who show up in the emergency room after consuming cannabis. Intoxication and cyclical vomiting (cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome) and alarming psychiatric symptoms such as psychosis are among the top problems bringing some marijuana users to the hospital.

Research on cannabis has been lacking surveillance of these kinds of impacts for decades, he says. And rescheduling the drug will not fill that “gaping hole in risk surveillance,” he writes.